The Regional Premiere of WISH YOU WERE HERE Comes to Gloucester Stage Company

Gloucester Stage Company will continue its 45th-year celebration with the regional premiere of "WISH YOU WERE HERE" by Pulitzer Prize Winner Sanaz Toossi. Recipient of the prestigious Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, this captivating production will be directed by Melory Mirashrafiº and run at Gloucester Stage from Friday, August 9 to Sunday, August 25.

Sanaz Toossi's masterful storytelling brings breathtaking humanity and cutting wit to the stage as "WISH YOU WERE HERE" chronicles a decade of life as best friends become friends long lost, searching for the bond that once defined them. Featuring a cast of women with Iranian heritage who are making their debuts at Gloucester Stage, the production stars Isan Salem as Zari, Deniz Khateri as Nazanin, Aryana Asefirad as Rana, Cerra Cardwell as Shideh and Josephine Moshiri Elwood as Salme.

Directed by the multi-talented Melory Mirashrafiº, this enlightened comedy invites audiences into the vibrant world of a circle of tight-knit girlfriends in 1980s Iran. As they gather to plan weddings, share intimate moments, and trade witty banter, their lives are set against the backdrop of a country in turmoil, where protests and political unrest threaten to disrupt their sense of normalcy. The play delicately explores themes of friendship, identity, and the complex choices individuals must make in the face of uncertainty.

"After I finished reading Wish You Were Here, I felt like I met my oldest friends onstage playing through a decade of our lives together," said Rebecca Bradshaw, Gloucester Stage's Artistic Director. "They are messy and hilarious, but there are also daunting realities seeping through these women's curtains ready to infect their fragile bonds. Sanaz has a way of making you feel like you have a seat on the couch next to her characters while layering in an authentic world that you may never experience as an American. We get the opportunity to see friends consider emigrating before they are labeled immigrants. But first, we get to lift up a group of women through all of their beauty, ridiculousness, and pain. We are honored to be able to present the regional premiere of this powerful play to the Gloucester Stage audiences."

"Wish You Were Here is an exploration of what it is to be an Iranian woman across time and geography. The women of the play are bright, hilarious, flawed, and live undoubtedly within the context of one another. There is an elegance to the simplicity of the language, and a brand of unapologetic comedy cut with immeasurable yearning that is distinctly Iranian, yet undeniably human," shared Director Melory Mirashrafi. "Every time I read Wish You Were Here, I see photographs of my mom and her four sisters from the seventies and eighties: Getting married, plucking hairs, trading advice, growing older, and for some, eventually leaving. They are a compilation of each other, making their migration not just an absence of the place they left behind, but the people."

The regional premiere of "WISH YOU WERE HERE" features scenic design by Lindsay Fuori, costume design by Karen J. Gilmer, lighting design by Amanda Fallon, sound design by Bahar Royaee, and prop design by Emme Shaw. The production's dramaturg is Vahdat Yeganah.

WISH YOU WERE HERE will run from Friday, August 9, through Sunday, August 25. All performances, unless noted, are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 pm, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 3:00 pm at Gloucester Stage Company, located at 267 East Main Street, Gloucester. Tickets are now on sale and available at GloucesterStage.com.

The 2024 Season at Gloucester Stage has been made possible by the Shubert Foundation. "WISH YOU WERE HERE" is made possible in part by Mollie Byrnes.

About the Artists:

Sanaz Toossi (she/her) (Playwright) is an Iranian-American playwright who won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Her plays include the critically acclaimed, award-winning English (co-production Atlantic Theater Company/Roundabout Theatre Company) and Wish You Were Here (Playwrights Horizons; Williamstown/Audible, released 2020). She was the 2019 P73 Playwriting Fellow, a recipient of the 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award, the 2022 recipient of The Horton Foote Award and Hull-Warriner Prize, and most recently, the 2023 recipient of the Best New American Play Obie Award. Sanaz received her MFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

Melory Mirashafiº (she/they) (Director) is an Iranian-American theatre artist based in Portland, Oregon. Melory is a Stage Directors & Choreographers Foundation Fellow (Young Americans, Pittsburgh Public Theater & Portland Center Stage) and recipient of the Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Prize (Glück's Orfeo) and Thomas Derrah Emerging Artist Award (English, SpeakEasy Stage Company). Credits: Sapience (Artists Repertory Theatre); English (Speakeasy Stage); La Cenerentola (Portland Opera); The Music Man (Third Rail Repertory Theatre); Young Americans (Portland Center Stage); Shahmaran (Shaking the Tree Theatre). Melory's writing can be found in the Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays and Routledge's Troubling Traditions: Canonicity, Theatre, and Performance in the U.S. Melory is an SDC associate member.

Isan Salem (she/her) (Zari) is a first generation Iranian from Toronto, Canada and is currently a rising senior at Emerson College in the BFA Musical Theatre program. Recent credits at Emerson Stage include Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 (Natasha), Bonnets (u/s Georgette, Fortitude), Old Jake's Skirts (Ellis, Good Samaritan), and New Fest Short Works' Vampire Therapy (Charlene).

Deniz Khateri (she/her) (Nazanin) Deniz is a multidisciplinary artist (actor, director, playwright, shadow puppetry artist and animator) based in New York. Her works experiment with form and focus on memory, grief, immigration and the concept of home. Born and raised in Iran, Deniz has performed extensively in Tehran, Boston and New York. Some of her favorite credits include: Babe in Friends & Lovers & Others (Tank NYC), Puccini's SM woman in Puccini (The West End Theatre), Marjan in English (Speakeasy Stage), The woman in Kiss (ArtsEmerson), Masha in The Three Sisters (Apollinaire). A playwriting lab resident at NYC's New Perspective Theatre, and former artist in residence at Center at West Park, Deniz has trained in master classes with prominent International Artists including Peter Brook, Krymov, Paul Zaloom and Gardzienice Theatre Company of Poland. She is an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College and Queens Borough Community College of CUNY.

Deniz is one of the three recipients of 2024 Al-Bustan award for her solo performance "A Bach'eh who wanted to become Bach". Awarded by UNIMA-USA for "excellence in writing for the art of puppetry" she has been the recipient of NYSCA award for her new project "Husks from Iran," as well as the NYFA fund for her Oscar-qualified documentary animated web series, "Diasporan", for which she is the writer, director, animator and singer and explores the daily struggles of immigrants.

Aryana Asefirad (she/her) (Rana) is a first generation Iranian-Californian born and raised in the Bay Area and currently based out of New York City. She is a recent graduate of The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre conservatory program where she studied the Meisner Technique. Her recent credits include Mullah/Farraday/Ensemble and Understudy (Bee) and Dunn (Men on Boats). Prior to pursuing a career in the arts, Aryana received her B.A from the University of California, Irvine in Public Health Policy and International Studies.

Cerra Cardwell (she/her) (Shideh) is a Middle Eastern-Italian-American self-taped actor and comedian from New York City. She is making her debut at Gloucester Stage with Wish You Were Here. Her recent theater credits include Stupid F*cking Bird, The Seagull, The Words Will Come (Off Broadway); Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare Theatre Company), A Midsummer Night's Dream, Headwaters Theatre: Bee, Her Majesty & Sons: Richard I (Folger Theatre) and The Brehon(Prologue Theatre), and in London Measure for Measure, Hedda Gabler and Scenes from an Execution. Her film credits include "Missing Persons" with other credits being "Grinding" (post production), "Reality Sets In" (Amazon Prime), "Meet Amal" (post production), "Doin' Great," and "It's Good to be a Girl" (Crystal Moselle). She holds an MFA, Classical Acting from the STC Academy at the Shakespeare Theatre and George Washington University, an MA in Acting from the Rose Bruford College (London) and received her Shakespeare Certification from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Cerra is currently the face of MiraLax USA as the friendly and knowledgeable "Aunt Mira."

Josephine Moshiri Elwood (she/her) (Salme) is making her debut with Gloucester Stage Company. Other local theater credits include Old Money (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company), Prayer for the French Republic (The Huntington), Onegin,Gabriel (Greater Boston Stage Company), English, People, Places, & Things, Hand to God and The Whale (Speakeasy Stage), Othello, God's Ear (Actor's Shakespeare Project) Vanity Fair (Central Square Theater), Long Ago and Far Away, The Cherry Orchard (Walking the dog Theatre) and on television/film in "Nos4a2," The Immigrant. Josephine performs regularly with Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting from Emerson College.

PERFORMANCE TIMES AND LOCATIONS: Unless noted, all performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 pm, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 3:00 pm at Gloucester Stage Company, located at 267 East Main Street, Gloucester.

TICKETS ON SALE NOW: Tickets to the Gloucester Stage 2023 season are on sale now. Single Ticket prices range from $15 to $67, with discounts available for seniors, military families, college students, youth under 18, young professionals under 35, Card to Culture (EBT and WIC), and Cape Ann residents. For detailed ticket information, visit www.gloucesterstage.com.

Season Packages start at $200 for four tickets for any mainstage performance and include early access to seating, no fees, and free ticket exchanges. Packages can be purchased or renewed by calling the Box Office at 978.281.4433 or visiting gloucesterstage.com/subscribe.

For additional information, contact the Box Office at 978.281.4433 or boxoffice@gloucesterstage.com. Located at 267 East Main Street, Gloucester, the Box Office is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

ºStage Directors and Choreographers Society (S.D.C.) Union Member *Actors Equity Association (A.E.A.) Union Member

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxuqQDLumbU&t=23s


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